Surf’s up!

I was living in a major ski town prior to making my journey down to Nicaragua. When I told my ski-bunny friends of my plans to travel to Nica, the first comment they made was how envious they were of my opportunity to surf at one of the most up-and-coming surf destinations in the world right now. Nicaragua’s growth in tourism is developing at a rapid pace and provides ski fanatics and surf bro’s alike with a perfectly inexpensive, consistently warm, offshore wind-laden paradise with no shortage of clean tubular waves.

I myself am by no means a practiced surfer and found myself in this Central American paradise for the writing…and the dancing of course. That being said, surfing may just end up being the icing on the cake of my Nicaraguan experience. While staying at the Gran Pacifica resort last weekend I was able to take a board out with a few new friends. We loaded into the bed of our instructor’s truck and our off-road trek to the beach commenced. There we were, a few gals and a few boards enjoying some laughs and a little puddle hopping before dipping ourselves into the salty Pacific.

We got to the beach and discussed the basics of surfing, strapped onto our boards, and charged the ocean with dry ambition. Our naive enthusiasm would be dampened moments later upon realizing just how incredibly strong the crashing waves can be, and just how little we knew about how to navigate through them. Alas, with a few helpful pointers from our instructor, we were equipped with a few simple, yet critical, tips on how to swim through the waves. The helpful hints enabled us to reach a far enough point in the water to begin catching a few waves back towards shore, with the end goal being to stand up…a girl can dream.

Luckily, we were all novices so it wasn’t too embarrassing when the waves of the Pacific flexed their incredibly potent muscles in our faces. My body was growing exhausted with every pummel and my nostrils sufficiently salted. My stubborn nature carried me through, however, and as soon as I was ready to hang up the board, I caught a wave, stood up, felt like the silver surfer, and crashed back into the water. Yahoo! I rode the wave for a matter of seconds but my pride was refueled and my energy followed suit. I got a few rides in before returning to shore, happily exhausted.